Jin Shengtan - Reputation and Legacy

Reputation and Legacy

Many of Jin's contemporaries admired him as a man possessing great literary talent. Qian Qianyi, a famous scholar, official, and historian of the late Ming Dynasty, proclaimed that Jin was possessed by a spirit, explaining his talent. In a biography of Jin, Liao Yan wrote that Jin had discovered the entire secret of competition. Some contemporaries and later writers did denounce Jin on moral grounds. Jin's contemporary Kui Zhuang called him "greedy, perverse, licentious, and eccentric".

After the May Fourth Movement in 1919, scholars such as Hu Shi began to advocate the writing of novels in Vernacular Chinese. As a result, Jin gained recognition as a pioneer in the field of Chinese popular literature. Hu Shi himself praised Jin in the preface to his commentary on the Water Margin, saying, "Sheng-t'an's ability to debate was invincible; his pen was most persuasive. During his time, he had the reputation of a genius. His death was also a case of extreme cruelty, which shook the whole country. After his death, his reputation became even greater". Liu Bannong, another scholar of the era, also praised Jin's version of Water Margin as the best edition in terms of literary value.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, many common views on history changed. Under the Communist government, Water Margin became a tale of peasant resistance to the ruling class, and Romance of the West Chamber symbolized the casting off of the outmoded traditional marriage system. Jin's critiques and editorial modifications of these works did not mirror the world view of Marxism, however, and he began to be criticized. In more recent years, however, Chinese historians have adopted a more balanced view of Jin.